When a user performs a search for documents within a database, a search engine may analyze and/or filter the documents within the database to provide the most relevant results. Some documents returned to the user may be part of a family of related documents, such as a file embedded within another file or an email with corresponding email attachments.
Traditional search engines may only return documents that exactly match the search criteria entered by the user. Documents that are associated with found documents but do not match the search criteria themselves may not be included within the search results. These related documents may provide additional context and/or relevant information regarding the user's search, but unfortunately they may not be made available to the user.
In other examples, some search engines may always return the entire document families of documents found in the search, regardless of whether the user wishes to view them. This may result in broad, cluttered search results that are similarly unhelpful to the user. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies a need for improved methods for searching documents.